It was a week ago this past Saturday that our back yard was filled with leaves already. The drought here in TN has left the trees crunchy and dry instead of supple and bright. The colors were not that fantastic and the “fall” of the leaves happened in just a couple of days. It left me standing at my back door dreading the hard work before me.
My back yard is not huge, but it’s not small either. It is full of beautiful trees. None of them are evergreens, mind you. They are all large, full and beautiful trees. I am a sap for this time of year anyway, and there is nothing I love more than a backyard that looks like a huge patchwork quilt made of gold, red, and orange leaves. This year it was only made to look like a neglected yard since the leaves were basically dead before they ever hit the ground. I heave a sigh. I put on my gloves, check my pocket to be sure my cell phone is there, turned on and turned up. That’s lesson number one when you have a deployed loved one.
I start at the top of the hill. My thoughts drift quite a bit. This is how I get through my workouts and what I do when I am running. I kind of drift in and out of lucid thought to a daydream type state. I guess this is some resemblance to what a seasoned athlete would call his “zone.” So, I am raking, and I am making very little progress. Regardless, I keep moving and doing. My thoughts are drifting back and forth between Bryan and Mike. I am laughing in my head at something Bryan said before he left, and I am remembering the last chat I had with Mike. I am thinking about all of my kiddos, the house work that needs done, and bills that need paying. I am drifting and raking.
Suddenly I feel a twinge. It’s not in my back or my knee, but it’s in my heart and it’s a small taste of resentment, and with that twinge came a nice twist of guilt. Actually the resentment is fleeting and small, but the guilt is massive and overwhelming! Here I am having a pity party for myself over having to rake these leaves. I scolded myself for thinking “If Bryan were here… or if Mike were here…” See, Nate is here, but he has been so busy between school, work and JROTC that he could not be home this day… as a matter of fact he has not been home during daylight hours all week. I am glad that he is busy with good things though. Of course when he is busy so am I. He doesn’t have a car yet, and work is the only way for him to earn one. Once he has a car then he will have freedom and I will not have to wake the baby in the morning to take him to school and keep her up late to pick him up.
It really isn’t just the raking that has me blue. It’s that everything is so overwhelming some days. There are days where my little Tot just doesn’t want to cooperate with anything, and she has her papa’s will and his uncanny ability to convince me of just about anything. I have the weight of the entire household on my shoulders. Every financial decision, every medical decision, educational, social, and disciplinary actions are all mine to think through, decide and act. Of course that means when I feel like I have made a bad decision, or even just a “less good” one, I get to reap the full benefit of excruciating self-doubt and guilt.
Shoot, it’s not even all of that. It’s fatigue too. I go to bed painfully late and I get up early. I run all day long, and when the day is over I spend half of the night cleaning and preparing for the next day. My “down” time, when Emma has a sitter, is often spent at appointments or running errands. Of course sometimes I get the occasional luxury of doing yard work. I choose to lose sleep to blog because it’s my hobby and my fun time. About this time in my reverie I hear chattering around me. I look over the fences around me and I see it. I see them. There are men over the fences doing yard work. There are wives out there with them pruning and preparing to plant their tulip bulbs after the first freeze. They are chatting and laughing and helping each other. I suddenly feel sad and tired.
Back to raking. I have a few piles going now. A couple of large ones already accumulated pretty fast. My back is sore today, and this pity stew I am eating is really icky. I lean on my rake for support. It was about this time that a man approached me. It startled me at first. He said “Hey! I am your neighbor from across the way there,” and he pointed toward a pretty house. “My wife will be here in a minute, but I noticed you all are a military family.” Let’s see, we have had men in ACUs standing around outside before, we have Army stickers on the car, I put a flag out every morning and I have a humongous yellow ribbon on my front yard tree. I guess it’s obvious!
The man then says that he was out doing his yard work and his wife prompted him to come and offer me a hand with mine. She was walking over the pathway at this time and she had a huge smile on her face and a hand extended before she even made it to my yard. She is pretty, warm and very easy to chat with. Her husband disappeared for a moment and she and I stood there chatting. When he came back he had 3 other men with him! They all had rakes, leaf bags and even clippers! The wife of the first man says “Let’s go sit on the deck, chat and we’ll let these guys finish this work for you today!” I am so overwhelmed that I am truly about to bust into a full episode of weeping. I can not believe it! She is so easy to talk to. I normally am quite a stoic, but with her I can just talk and share these burdens and this loneliness that at times is overwhelming. I don’t think I have ever talked so candidly to anyone other than my husband about how difficult it can be some days. I am purging that pity stew I had been eating. Suddenly the cat was out of the bag. Claire confessed it all. She’s tired today. Tired, wore out, and sick of being so strong. I know it’s just that kind of day and I will get through. That’s no comfort in the moment though. No more room for pity. She and I just moved into the realm of brutal honesty.
It wasn’t much later that I looked up and noticed that my yard looked fantastic. I was ready to cry again, but this time out of relief and gratefulness. I offered everyone a drink, but they insisted that they were just fine, and thanked me. They told me to thank my husband and my son for their service to our Country. I hear that a lot, and I do pass the message along. I don’t know if these people realize that they just thanked me for holding the fort down and working so hard to keep it all going smoothly. They took a moment to offer a helping hand in a very tangible way — a small way that made a huge difference to a discouraged and tired neighbor.
I stood up to shake my new found friend’s hand, and I heard a roaring motor in the background. It was loud and intrusive. So loud, in fact, that it shook my universe for just a moment. I looked at my extended hand, and there sitting in it was a rake. I looked around me and I was standing there in my backyard, and all around me were fallen leaves. The loud roaring that woke me from my daydream was the neighbors lawn mower. In a short day dream I had a momentary oasis.
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